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Research Guides

Integrating the Library into Moodle

A useful guide for faculty who wish to assure students have ready access to Library resources from Moodle.

Providing students with ready access to a Librarian through Moodle

Moodle is the perfect place for students to reach out to Librarians for help with research and library resources. To make this easier, Moodle administrators have made it possible for faculty to assign the role of "Librarian" to their designated subject or course librarian in Moodle. This will help their Librarian to:

  • Provide help at students' point-of-need.
  • Answer student questions in Moodle discussion boards; and
  • Proactively post library and research tips, links to resources and other helpful information.

The library liaison will not see grades, but with faculty approval they will be able to add Library resources and activities, post forum messages, etc.

Want to give it a try? Please follow the instructions below or see the attached pdf:

  1. Open your Moodle course
  2. Click the Assign Roles link in the Administration block of your course
  3. Click the Librarian link
  4. Search for the librarian you'd like to add on the right hand side
  5. Highlight their name and click the Add button to move them to the left hand side
  6. Your course will show up for the librarian in the "My Courses" section when they log into Moodle

If your course is research intensive, it may be useful to create a Library Questions forum where students can post questions about library resources and research. Select the 'auto' or 'forced subscription' option to ensure that all students (including the librarian) receive a copy of the forum questions and answers in their email inbox.

For more information, please contact your subject librarian or submit a UT Help ticket for assistance.

See below for "how to" add a Library Guide directly to Moodle.

Would you like the students to interact directly with the Librarian through Moodle? You may wish to create a Library Discussion Forum. To do so:

  1. 'Turn editing on', select 'Add an activity or resource', select 'Forum' from the options menu, then click 'Add'
  2. Give the forum a name (such as "Library Questions and Discussion") and a description
  3. In the 'Subscription and tracking section', select "forced subscription" from the drop-down menu by 'Subscription mode' to ensure that all students in your class also receive copies of forum posts in their email Inbox
  4. Click "Save and return to class" or "Save and display." See sample below.

Once set up, librarians may answer student questions or post library information and research tips. With your "go ahead," the Librarian may be able to set this up on their own, much depends on their designated role in Moodle.  

Add a Library Guide to Moodle

Why? It's all about point of need...

The Library's goal is to get our resources to our students at their point of need. What better place to begin but in Moodle? It's possible to have a Library Guide with relevant resources embedded directly in your Moodle course. Take a look at the example below...clickable links to Library databases or other resources right through Moodle. How? Faculty may set this up by following a few simple steps as shown on the following screenshots....or better yet: assign your Librarian his/her role in Moodle and he/she will do it for you! Take a look at the next couple of slides to see details...

Start here

After turning editing on in Moodle, in the course topic section where you wish to add the Library Guide  select “add an activity or resource’. Scroll down on the resulting pop up window and under “Resources,” select “Page” and then click “add.”

What to put where

You will now see a new page with two areas to add content.

  1. The top space labeled “General” is for adding a title and description of the resource--and perhaps instructions about using it.  This information will be visible to the students as part of the Topic list in the Moodle course page.
  2. The bottom space labeled “Content” is for adding the actual resource. See the next slide for specific details about adding the HTML to get the LibGuide to display properly.

Tricky bit here

To add the guide to Moodle, you will need to insert HTML code that includes the location of the Library Guide. To do this, in Moodle first click on the small blue "arrow"  as shown in the screen shot (by #1).  Then click the small brackets as shown below (by #2). This will now allow you to enter the appropriate code. The  basic format for the code is  <iframe width="100%" height="500" src="insertlibguideurlhere"></iframe>. Make sure to insert the correct url for the library guide you wish to include in the course page.

 A couple of things to keep in mind

  1. be sure the url begins with https:// NOT http://. Not sure why but that's what our coding gurus advise.
  2. you may adjust the size of the image on the page by changing the width and height of the window. Do this by adjusting the % in width and the number in height.

To encourage use, 

  1. I changed the Topic name from "Topic #1" to “Suggested Library Resources” so students know what they will find when clicking. I have also added more description and instructions here. 
  2. In this instance, students must click on the link entitled “Library Guide for Drew Summer Institute” to access the library guide.

License information

Under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, content from this LibGuide has been adapted from  the "Integrating the Library into Moodle" LibGuide by Jennifer Hamilton at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 

Questions? Need Help? Email reference@drew.edu

Drew University Library, http://www.drew.edu/library